Chapter 11 – Do it For Her

Morgan and Nah searched through as many books collection as they thought may have contain information on Naga's bell. Laurent and his mother were the first libraries they investigated and while Miriel did own books on plants, none of them even mentioned the flower. They also looked through tomes owned by Robin, Ricken, Libra and others in the army. They had no luck there as well.

Nah wondered if they should ask if the army's dark mages, but they instead asked Noire on the likelihood that her parents possessed any general books on botany. The nervous girl was very familiar with her parents' books, especially Tharja's and assured them any books on plants were only about how to use them in hexes. Morgan was glad that they did not ask Tharja and Henry directly. Noire's mother especially unnerved him. She not only spied on and stared at his mother, she would also give these hard-to-read glances at him and his sister, as if she were not sure what to think of Robin's children from the future.

Nah suggested that it would be far more likely for them to find a book on the whereabouts of the flower once they were on land and should stop looking. Morgan agreed, but he thought to himself to keep searching the ship anyway, even if it was unlikely. He looked through random rooms in his spare time, which he had a lot of on the ship. One late evening, the prince found a small chamber in the lower deck. Though it mostly contained cleaning supplies such as deck brushes, there was also a shelf with a few books. As luck would further have it, they were all tomes on plants. There was a layer of dust on the book, so Morgan thought they could not have belonged to anyone in the army. Maybe they belonged to the captain or a very well-read sailor who was a hobbyist botanist. Such a small room was a strange place to put them, too, but Morgan thought he shouldn't look a gifted horse in the mouth. He took three of the books and brought them up to his cabin.

The most conveniently promising book was titled Mirage Flora: Flowers and Plants of Myth and Legend. He would perhaps give the book a more thorough read-through someday, assuming he could find its owner or buy his own copy. The boy liked to learn about many different things. Sure enough, more than halfway through the tome, Morgan found what they were looking for.

The Naga's bell is speculated to be from the Campanulaceae family. This fantastically rare plant allegedly blooms once every 200 years under the full moon. Some botanists believe that Naga's bells are purely mythological due to the this fanciful description. Others say that it makes sense for the plant to be rare due to the small window of time that it can be pollinated.

Naga's bell is said to be of great importance to the manaketes, especially the divine tribe. As the name implies, the flower is significant to Naga the Divine Dragon. According to many legends, finding the plant in bloom is said to bring good fortune and happiness. Locating it is also said to be an arduous task. Naga's bells are believed to grow in remote, treacherously craggy mountains and sheer cliffs. What further complicates attempts to locate the flower is that the Naga's bell is reportedly indistinguishable from other plants when there is no full moon. Other reports say that the flower grows rapidly under the moonlight and thus cannot even be found any other time.

The book continued on, stating that while the endeavor to find the flower was foolhardy in many respects, it would be a fantastic discovery to prove its existence and study it. It then detailed either ideal or rumored locations of Naga's bells. One was apparently a sheer mountainside near Wyvern Valley; too late for that one. As luck would have it, another location was actually more or less on the route to Ylisstol, some very steep cliffs. There would be a full moon in twelve days. If the army set up camp close enough on a night of the full moon, maybe they would be able to search the cliffs.

If we miss this chance, we'll have to wait until at least a month for another full moon to try again, and it could take much longer than that, too, Morgan thought, Sure, the war with Valm is over, but we don't know if we stopped the bad future. There are still many Risen out there, after all.

The blue-haired prince took a map of the continent of Ylisse and tried to figure out how long it would take them to march near the cliffs in question after they arrived in Port Ferox. Even with a conservative estimate of how far the army marches in a single day, Morgan calculated that they would reach the cliffs on the second or third day of the full moon. That, of course, assumed there were no major delays along the way. So many things had to fall into place, and there was no guarantee that there would be Naga's bells growing on those cliffs. Even so, the opportunity was too hard to resist.

I think I'll tell Nah if we happen to camp near those cliffs. I don't want to get her hopes up, only to have us delayed by something. She would be very disappointed. I really want to make her wish come true, but I don't think we can convince Mom and Dad to get there on time. We would have to stop if we find any Risen we or help a village that needed us. If we do miss this chance, I'll tell her after we reach Ylisstol.

With that thought finished, Morgan yawned. It was rather late. Despite how tired he felt, though, he laid in bed for a while longer, thinking of what more he could do to find a Naga's bell.

Luck, or at least a series of very fortunate coincidences, seemed to go in their favor. The ship arrived at Port Ferox on just the right day. There wasn't enough time at the port for Nah or Morgan to look for any information on Naga's bell. Nah figured that the Halidom would be a more likely place to do research, anyway. After all, the people of Regna Ferox were not known for their scholarship.

Morgan thought for a moment that he should tell her about the book he found. He instead kept on acting as if he didn't know. The more he mulled over the situation, the more he believed that he should get the precious flower by himself. Part of it was to avoid disappointing Nah. Even if they did reach the cliffs in time, maybe no Naga's bells grew there. If Morgan went himself and saw that weren't any of the flowers, Nah wouldn't be the wiser and they could try one of the other places at a later time.

Mostly, however, he wanted to make Nah happy. He wished to surprise her and impress her. He liked to make his friends and family happy, but there was more to it than that in Nah's case. Was it because she had recently told him about her lonesome childhood? It pained him to see Nah cry like that and to hear that the people who should have cared for her shunned her instead. He did want to see her at her happiest, but it was not just to make up for her past. There was much more to it than that.

Morgan became increasingly certain of his decision as they marched closer to the cliffs. Yes, there was still a chance that no Naga's bells grew on the cliff side. There was a chance his calculations were off, or that the army would be delayed. The blue-haired prince was nothing if not idealistic, though. He would at least try to make her happy and surprise her with the item that would make Naga answer her prayer. Nah was very precious to him. His heart felt like it would swell to bursting when he was with her or thought of her. She was a dear friend, perhaps even his best friend, but that was insufficient to explain these powerful feelings.

As far back as Morgan could remember, a somewhat strange premise since his memory was so fragmented from before he was found at the Ruins of Time, his mother was the most important person to him in the entire world. Over time, however, he came to regard many other people as dear to him: his warmhearted and considerate father; Lucina, his strong and selfless older sister; his many friends in the army, particularly among his peers from the future. There was also his cousin Owain and his family. He still regarded Owain as a good friend instead of a cousin, but he did care about the young man as well as his bubbly Aunt Lissa and gruff Uncle Lon'qu. Nah and the way he felt about her was different from all of them, though. The way he cared about her was stronger in some ways. He could not say that she was just as important to him as his mother, but it felt that way sometimes.

Could it be that...?

AN: A short chapter this time, but I hope to make up for it by uploading the next chapter very soon, no more than a week or so. I've been doing pretty well as far as updates are concerned. I've said before that I would try to finish this fic before 2018, but now I think I can reach a loftier goal: finish it before Fire Emblem Echoes is released. If I miss that goal, I still have the old one, heh.

The title of this chapter may or may not be inspired by a Steven Universe song, ha ha. Anyway, this is probably the only chapter where there's no dialogue at all, but I've been wanting to get more into Morgan's head in this story. This is admittedly not the most exciting of chapter, but I hope you all enjoy nonetheless.